dongfeng
Veteran Member
I've been wondering this for a while...
The IBM 5150 is an American machine, and therefore (quite understandibly) boots nativly from any DOS disk and fully recognises the US keyboard layout as standard - ie, it does not require any additional drivers for the full keyboard to function. The British layout keyboard layout is slightly different. A few keys are shuffled around to accomodate for the pound sign £, and therefore proves to be inaccurately mapped when booted to DOS without additional drivers. Now, from what I can tell, International keyboard drivers were included from PC-DOS 3.00. I can load KEYBUK.COM, and British keyboard mappings are loaded and my pound sign works! My wondering is about earlier machines, with DOS 2.00 / 2.10? These versions of DOS did not include keyboard drivers.
One of my 5150s was built in mid-1983, and came (from new) with a British layout keyboard and PC-DOS 2.00. What was the owner to do? If IBM supplied drivers prior to the ones in DOS 3.xx, I have never heard any mention of them in any IBM manual, nor online. The solution is to use a later version of DOS, or to copy the 3.00 keyboard drive to a DOS 2.00 diskette. But that's not the point
The IBM 5150 is an American machine, and therefore (quite understandibly) boots nativly from any DOS disk and fully recognises the US keyboard layout as standard - ie, it does not require any additional drivers for the full keyboard to function. The British layout keyboard layout is slightly different. A few keys are shuffled around to accomodate for the pound sign £, and therefore proves to be inaccurately mapped when booted to DOS without additional drivers. Now, from what I can tell, International keyboard drivers were included from PC-DOS 3.00. I can load KEYBUK.COM, and British keyboard mappings are loaded and my pound sign works! My wondering is about earlier machines, with DOS 2.00 / 2.10? These versions of DOS did not include keyboard drivers.
One of my 5150s was built in mid-1983, and came (from new) with a British layout keyboard and PC-DOS 2.00. What was the owner to do? If IBM supplied drivers prior to the ones in DOS 3.xx, I have never heard any mention of them in any IBM manual, nor online. The solution is to use a later version of DOS, or to copy the 3.00 keyboard drive to a DOS 2.00 diskette. But that's not the point
Last edited:
